A Journey Through Practical Nerdery

Why I Love Weightlifting

There’s a really beautiful elegance in getting under a weight you have to struggle to move and then moving it repeatedly.

The human body and mind have evolved to overcome obstacles, either through direct action or by getting around them with ingenuity.

With weightlifting you develop good form which maximizes your ability to generate force with the muscle mass you have. Then simultaneously as you constantly increase the load your body is placed under, your skin, your muscles, your bones, and your mind adapt to the stress.

The really interesting thing is how those adaptations carry outside the gym.

As you can physically carry more load in the gym, you can physically carry more load outside the gym.

As you get used to the discomfort of moving ever increasing amounts of weight, you get more and more used being in situations that you’re uncomfortable in.

The ability to enter a situation where you feel like you’re out of your depth (and you probably are out of your depth) and use the basics of what you already to know to figure out how to push forward is something that allows you to make real progress everywhere else in your life.